Dark Poetry

[Jezetha]

Didn't know this poem. Thanks!

Question: does it really read abatoir? Shouldn't that be abattoir?

[Andrea Bonazzi]

Quote Originally Posted by Jezetha

Question: does it really read abatoir? Shouldn't that be abattoir?

Yes, is abatoir as sometimes in French, with the single "t".

Reading the note in Vol. 2, it come from a manuscript at the John Hay Library, Providence, RI.
The Black Book of C.A.S. contains early versions of several passages from it.

[Bleak&Icy]

"The Unquiet Grave"

I

‘The wind doth blow today, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
I never had but one true-love;
In cold grave she was lain.

II

‘I’ll do as much for my true-love
As any young man may;
I’ll sit and mourn all at her grave
For a twelvemonth and a day.’

III

The twelvemonth and a day being up,
The dead began to speak:
‘Oh who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?’—

IV

‘’Tis I, my love, sits on your grave,
And will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips,
And that is all I seek.’—

V

‘You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips;
But my breath smells earthy strong;
If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips,
Your time will not be long.

VI

‘’Tis down in yonder garden green,
Love, where we used to walk,
The finest flower that ere was seen
Is wither’d to a stalk.

VII

‘The stalk is wither’d dry, my love,
So will our hearts decay;
So make yourself content, my love,
Till God calls you away.’

-- from The Oxford Book of Ballads edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944).

[Bleak&Icy]

"Festival" by H. P. Lovecraft (published December 1926 in Weird Tales)

There is snow on the ground,
And the valleys are cold,
And a midnight profound
Blackly squats o'er the world;
But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of
Feastings unhallowed and old.

There is death in the clouds,
There is fear in the night,
For the dead in their shrouds
Hail the sun's turning flight.
And chant wild in the woods as they dance
Round a Yule-altar fungous and white.

To no gale of Earth's kind
Sways the forest of oak,
Where the thick boughs entwined
By mad mistletoes choke,
For these pow'rs are the pow'rs of the dark,
From the graves of the lost Druid-folk.

And mayst thou to such deeds
Be an abbot and priest,
Singing cannibal greeds
At each devil-wrought feast,
And to all the incredulous world
Shewing dimly the sign of the beast.

[Daisy]

“Nemesis” (1917), by H. P. Lovecraft

Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived o'er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

I have whirled with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.

I had drifted o'er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies,
That the many-forked lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons, that out of the green waters rise.

I have plunged like a deer through the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches,
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove,
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers through dead branches above.

I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things, I care not to gaze on again.

I have scanned the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon rising up from the valleys
Shows the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, that I cannot endure to recall.

I have peered from the casements in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roofed village laid under
The curse of a grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble, I listen intently for sound.

I have haunted the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pinions of fear,
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages;
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.

I was old when the pharaohs first mounted
The jewel-decked throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncounted
When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.

Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.

Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived o'er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.

[vegetable theories]

Thomas Lovell Beddoes from "Death's Jest Book."

How strange it is that I can live to-day;
Nay look like other men, who have been sleeping
On quiet pillows and not dreamt ! Methinks
The look of the world's a lie, a face made up
O'er graves and fiery depths ; and nothings true
But what is horrible. - Luckless man
Avoids the miserable bodkin's point,
And, flinching from the insect's little sting,
In pitiful security keeps watch,
While 'twixt him and that hypocrite the sun,
To which he prays, comes windless pestilence,
Transparent as a glass of poisoned water
Through which the drinker sees his murderer smiling;
She stirs no dust, and makes no grass to nod,
Yet every footstep is a thousand graves,
And every breath of hers as full of ghosts
As a sunbeam full of motes...

[Daisy]

"The Sellers" (pub. 2006), by Thomas Ligotti

Which of them would
ever say that all they
have to sell is a piece
of fruit gone rotten?

Shriveled and yet
still pale green
with a dying life
made of mold.

They would never
tell you that what
they are selling
is something spoiled.

A piece of fruit
left forgotten,
unfit to be sold,
and ripe with pain.

[Daisy]

"The Certainty of Death" by William Cowper (1731-1800)

Mortals! around your destined heads
Thick fly the shafts of Death,
And lo! the savage spoiler spreads
A thousand toils beneath.

In vain we trifle with our fate;
Try every art in vain;
At best we but prolong the date,
And lengthen out our pain.

Fondly we think all danger fled,
For death is ever nigh;
Outstrips our unavailing speed,
Or meets us as we fly.

Thus the wrecked mariner may strive
Some desert shore to gain,
Secure of life, if he survive
The fury of the main.

But there, to famine doomed a prey,
Finds the mistaken wretch,
He but escaped the troubled sea
To perish on the beach.

Since then in vain we strive to guard
Our frailty from the foe,
Lord, let me live not unprepared
To meet the fatal blow!

[Daisy]

“The Humming Stair” (1953), by Joseph Payne Brennan

And will tomorrow come? And if it comes,
Will mackerel nets return their silver catch?
Will postmen drop their letters in the box?
—Or will a sly, uncertain stranger lift the latch?

Someone with knives has slaughtered in the street;
Someone has simpered on the stair, sniggered in the hall;
Someone has shouted, has danced upon the roof—
(Someone you know, someone you feared would fall.)

Crows have come over at night, cawing, cawing;
Owls have been seen in the noonday sun.
If eager apparitions enter flesh,
Where will you hide, which way will you run?

Where will you go when shadow seizes light?
When in your empty room dark mirror shines?
How will you hear your own wild laughter,
When up the humming stair the horror winds?

[Bleak&Icy]

"Unthinkable" by Thomas Ligotti

The thought unthinkable:
things will still be there
after you're not here.

All of the trees, the traffic:
Those scenes from a play
for which you didn't stay.

It makes much more sense
that when you are gone
the show won't go on.

Still, you leave things behind
pretty much as you found
them, but never mind--
you won't be around.